Swift Advances repossession conveyancing solicitor

[singlehoop]

In April this year my home was repossessed by Swift Advances. Before i go on i should say that they were pretty patient and in the end there was no alternative, i accept that.

However, my problem is the amount i was charged in interest and charges for selling the house.

Before the repossession i tried to get Swift to allow me to sell the house myself. I got quotes from a local estate agent and put together a financial plan to try and prove there was enough equity in the house to sell it and cover all the charges and main debt. It was going to be close but i worked out that if the house sold within 3 months there should be at least 20k in equity. Swift and the court rejected the plan and the house was repossessed. Again, i have no complaints about that decision, i owed the money and couldn't pay it.

The house was put up for £275,000 which all our neighbours thought was about £25,000 less than what it was worth. It sold a few weeks later for £280,000.

Swift have now sent me through the final costs and surprise surprise there was a shortfall of £700. It really seems that they have charged me just enough to swallow all the equity and leave me with nothing and them with everything.

The final debt was £250,583.60 and the sale price was £279,995. I was then charged for the repossession and house sale. That consisted of....

Estate agent £6,873.63
Court fees £435
Building insurance £181.23
Tradesmen invoices £536.35
Valuation fees £235.75
Legal fees £2,385.04
Post default collection charges £1,807.02
Administration Fee £928.25
Solicitors charge to attend court hearing £245
(actually Swift didnt attend, they sent a fax)
Eastern Councelling Agency default charge £360
Other fees and charges £2,017.00
Interest levied on charges incurred £1,227.27
Solicitors conveyancing fees £293.75
Add: Redemption administration fee £150
Early settlement interest charged £12,529.18

Total 30,204.47

So with the outstanding mortgage figure of £250,583.60 added to the charges above that gives a £280,788.07 total debt. With the house being sold for £279,995 i am left with a debt of £793.07

My problem is the charges listed above especially the estate agent fees. Coincidentally the estate agent i phoned when making up a financial plan were the same ones that Swift employed to sell the house. They had told me their charges would be 1.25% + vat. As the house sold for £280,000 that works out at about £4,100, but when they were selling it for Swift they charged £6,873.63.

I dont even know what half the charges listed above are for as there is no detail. Does this look right or have i been overcharged?

Many thanks in advance

Simon

[Amethyst]

Re: Swift Advances repossession

I would certainly ask for a breakdown of those charges, particularly the 'Other fees and charges £2,017.00'

I don't know about the other things, but I would think if they are charging you directly for estate agents fees then you should be entitled to view the invoice etc.

A full Subject access request should show up most things, but i would combine that with a specific request for a breakdown of the charges.

Nelliwops has been through similar with Swift I believe, I'll ask her to look in.

[paulb2905]

Re: Swift Advances repossession

Hi, im really sorry to hear about your difficulties

I guess for advice it would help to know a few things;

Were Swift the lender?? or Secured Loan Co? or something else?

Did you get any help from anyone, CAB etc - or perhaps visit an Insolvency Practicioner?


Im not an expert in any way but think i can clear up a few of these terms and im assuming that the property had a mortgage on it (i used to be a mortgage broker)

Estate agent £6,873.63 - Think you should query this with Swift and if you have it send them a copy of the fees you would have paid - i believe there are rules in relation to Insolvency Practioners paying fees to estate agents (should be somewhere between 3 quotes i believe) so it depends on what capacity Swift were acting

Court fees £435

Building insurance £181.23 - u should have cancelled your BI once repossed they have to insure property to comply with mortgage requirements

Tradesmen invoices £536.35 - Repair/remedial work perhaps

Valuation fees £235.75 - Estate agents dont usually charge for valuing

Legal fees £2,385.04 - Think this will be conveyancy fees looks about right for value of property

Post default collection charges £1,807.02 - its probably the cost of paying the monthly mortgage - does it look about right?

Administration Fee £928.25

Solicitors charge to attend court hearing £245 (actually Swift didnt attend, they sent a fax)

Eastern Councelling Agency default charge £360

Other fees and charges £2,017.00

Interest levied on charges incurred £1,227.27

Solicitors conveyancing fees £293.75 - I think this is above already

Add: Redemption administration fee £150 - mortgage co. if u had one for closing off the mortgage - its anywhere from about £150-300 usually

Early settlement interest charged £12,529.18 - ending a mortgage before it has run its course for any "Deal" of fixed/discounted/tracker etc incurs charges for doing so - listed in your mortgage paperwork - and usually something like 5% reducing each year till the mortgage deal has ended at which point you are no longer "tied" into it

Its a bit of a catch 22 situation as the longer they retain possession of the property the more the charges accrue for the monthly mortgage payments which come off the cost of selling the property ie reduce the Equity.
If your on an Interest only mortgage you are not paying off the Principle sum borrowed and
even if your on a Repayment mortgage (Capital and Interest) you pay much more of the interest off in the first 5-10 years, from memory its about 10%-ish of the Capital in the first 5 years.

Im sure they are people with more informed opinions but hope it helps a little.

[nelliewops]

Re: Swift Advances repossession

Hi singlehoop

Welcome to Beagles - Ame has asked me to take a look to see if I can help at all.........

So sorry to hear of your problems with Swift - it is an understatement when I say that they are not the best of people to deal with. Three years back Swift tried to repossess our house, but we very fortunately managed to avoid this and sell the house ourselves. Our redemption statement also included some of the same charges as yours.

I would definitely do as Ame suggested and send off a Subject Access Request (SAR) to Swift - this should give you back copies of all the paperwork relating to the time you held your account with them. It will cost you £10.00 and I believe there is a template here on LB.

You definitely need to see a breakdown of the charges and also the estate agent's invoice.

Once you have your information you can put in a request for a refund of the charges - not sure about the solicitors fees if they weren't actually in attendance, normally you can't reclaim legal fees.

Swift will possibly offer to refund some of the charges and you may be able to negotiate something regarding the shortfall.

From my own experience they won't agree to refund the full amount - I reclaimed several thousand pounds of charges and was offered less than £200, but I am in the process of pursuing them for more!

There are quite a few other disgruntled Swift customers/ex Swift customers out there on the forums and it's worth doing some research for further information. I'm not aware of anyone who has been in your exact position so cannot refer you to a specific person I'm afraid. There was one lady who took things all the way to court to get her charges refunded and did achieve a degree of success I believe, but as she signed a confidentiality clause she cannot share her story............

Good Luck with this and just shout if there's anything you need to ask!

Nellie x

[singlehoop]

Re: Swift Advances repossession

Wow, thanks for your messages Amethyst, paulb2905, and nelliewop, they really are helpful.

I will definitely ask them for a full Subject access request and complete breakdown of the charges. To answer your direct questions...

Swift were the lenders.

We sought advice from CAB but they told us we stood virtually no chance because we had no income at the time and had run in to many problems and arrears before. As i said in my original post that i accept that and we have no complaints about Swift in regards of time given to try and get back on our feet, just the charges. The original mortgage was for £215,000 and we ended up paying them £311,704.47. The actual break down is....

£215,190 original loan
Plus £66,310 interest levied (Excluding charges incurred)
= £281,500

plus £30,204.47 for everything i detailed in my first post

= £311,704.47

We made monthly payments of £30,917.20 in total which left us owing at the time of repossession £280,788.07. So on the original £215,190 loan we have actually paid £96,514.47 in interest and costs in less than 3 years. Some of those costs were legitimate but over £96,000 in less than 3 years is ridiculous.

I've just spoken to the estate agents that sold the house and they repeated what they told us before the repossession that they charge 1-1.5% but it's negotiable. That would work out to £4,200 so why have Swift charged us £6,873.63? I guess a SAR will answer a lot of these questions. The manager wasn't there but i'm ringing him on Monday.

Thanks again

Simon

[nelliewops]

Re: Swift Advances repossession

Hi Simon,

Just another thought - you didn't have Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) on this did you?

Our mortgage/loan with Swift was carried out over the phone through the broker Norton Finance and during that call PPI was mentioned. The broker said they would send us two sets of paperwork, one with and one without PPI, so we could decide whether to take the insurance or not. When we received the documentation to sign there was only one set - with PPI and as we were desperate for the money we went ahead and signed believing we had no choice. We are in the process of reclaiming this (our complaint has been upheld by the ombudsman) - it amounts to several thousand pounds - but you would need to initially approach the broker regarding this.

If you did have PPI there is a very strong likelihood it was mis-sold and could be reclaimed

Nellie x

[singlehoop]

Re: Swift Advances repossession

Unfortunately not Nellie. If they had only sent one set through i'd have done exactly the same as you. We were also desperate.

I can't remember who the broker was but i remember filling in the application form and our wages not being enough to afford the size of loan we needed. The person dealing with it worked out how much we needed to earn and told us to increase the amounts we said we earned. As it was a self cert mortgage it didn't matter how much we put. I was so desperate and scared of losing the house i did it without thinking of the consequencies.

Self cert mortgages....madness.

Thanks anyway Nellie

Simon.

[nelliewops]

Re: Swift Advances repossession

Oh well, never mind Simon - it was just a thought!

Once you put in your SAR and get your info back you will at least have something to work on and we will have a better idea of what can and can't be reclaimed.

Nellie x

[paulb2905]

Re: Swift Advances repossession

Just so you know that the way mortgages are designed is that you always pay off the much larger proportion of interest at the front end of the term and the capital towards the middle/end. Obviously if Interest only you only ever pay off the interest Never the capital.

I dont recognise Swift as a lender from when I was mortgage brokering. But there are/were a large number of what was called "sub prime" lenders - lending to people with adverse credit issues that we didnt deal with for ethical reasons. If it was a sub-prime mortgage the tie ins for mortgages tended to be exhorbitant and in excess of any "deal" period eg 2 year fixed rate and 5 year tie in - these could go as high as 10% (ive seen more) on a reducing amount yearly 10/9/8/7% etc

Re the broker - sounds like an unethical broker so you may want to check PPI again just in case, especially regards to Self Cert as PPI in the main precludes Self Employed.

Re the Estate Agents fees (it does depend where in country u are) 1-2% is around the norm - gets more complicated in London and some other cities as they have different (insert higher) rates for multi-agency agreements and estate agents in Derbyshire wanted to charge my folks 3%.

Re Conveyancy fees i would expect them to be between £1500 and £3000 for a property of similar value - if your of a mind to call up some conveyancy sols and get a few quotes to compare - it may be that they used an "in house" solicitor and (reading between the lines from the comments above) have charged exhorbitant rates for conveyancy - if this is the case it may be something to take up with the Law Society in the form of a complaint + evidence (but dont know what the actual process involves). It may be a bit more complicated with regards a repo property (insert higher cost) tho too.

I believe thay are entititled to offset the cost of monthly mortgage payments that would have been due against the equity in the property until the mortgage was settled, then they charge the early settlement charge @ x% of the mortgage remaining plus the closure charge on the mortgage. They would also have to insure the property against loss - eg a bus drives into it and destroys it, but it could be argued that when sold they would close the BI and get a refund of premium (which if they did/or u want to argue they should have entitles the refund to be applied to the sale price). There would have a been a land registry fee for taking you off the records

[singlehoop]

Re: Swift Advances repossession

Thanks Paul, I feel humbled by the time you've all taken to help me with this.

Your assumption that Swift is a sub prime lender is correct and i was/am that person with adverse credit that they prey on. I'm a big believer in taking responsibility for your own actions but the way they prey on desperate people is just wrong.

The broker was a company called Central Credit. (Possibly called Central Capital now) I'm sure it was a 1 year fixed period with a 4 year tie in. The interest rate was reduced by 2% for the first year but by the end had risen to over 13%. Only now am i beginning to understand these things.

I'll phone the estate agents on Monday and ask them if they charged Swift the amount that Swift charged me.

Thanks again.

[WendyB]

Re: Swift Advances repossession

I can't understand why they would charge interest on the charges incurred, think you would need to ask them to clarify this. Also, the estate agents fees may have been quoted to you nett, in which case you would need to add on VAT at 17.5 percent but that still wouldn't come to £6873. In fact if you take that as being gross the nett would work out to £5849.87 which equates to around 2 percent of the sale price.

[paulb2905]

Re: Swift Advances repossession

Its not a problem - what goes around comes around - thats both advice and karma
If you get the estate agents to tell you what they charged dont let on to Swift that they did (they shouldnt disclose it to you really)

Was trolling forums saw some nasty ones re swift over on CAG.

Im finding the whole process ironic not your particular case but all those people trying to resolve debt that face judges who think that the banks get it right.......... seriously if they hadnt been offering NINJA (No Income No Job or Assets) mortgages with HORRENDOUS post period interest rates AND THEN ILLEGALLY securitising the books of "debts" outside of the banking code/fsa we wouldnt be all in this mess in the first place!!!

What do they get - £100billion loan from the Government on preferential rates - what do we get Royally screwed and kicked while we are down........

Way to much of the OLD BOYS network in Banking/Finance FSA(OFT im not sure about) and Judges/Lawyers!!!!!

[nelliewops]

Re: Swift Advances repossession

Was trolling forums saw some nasty ones re swift over on CAG.

Yes, over on CAG a whole group of us had been working together to try to do something about Swift, including reporting their actions to the OFT (I know they do not usually investigate individual complaints) - there was talk that an investigation was being carried out by them in readiness to fine them such as other sub-prime lenders have been fined for their dodgy business practices.

We had a couple of contact names of those who were carrying out this investigation - David.Blocksidge@oft.gsi.gov.uk and Edward Allie at the same address. They might still be worth contacting although in the light of talk of the OFT being disbanded, I'm not so sure if it's worth it.............

There was/still is plenty of discussion on CAG re: section 140 of the CCA (Unfair Relationship) which replaced extortionate credit bargains, although as I haven't personally gone down that route I cannot advise on the likelihood of succeeding on that front.

Unfortunately as so many Swift customers on CAG were in the throes of facing repossession the whole momentum appears to have gone off a bit although I believe there is still plenty of stuff going on behind the scenes.

Nellie x

[singlehoop]

Re: Swift Advances repossession

I've emailed the two people you mentioned in your last message Nellie. In light of what you said about the OFT being disbanded i wont hold my breath but it's worth a try. I'll let you know if they get back to me.

Simon

[nelliewops]

Re: Swift Advances repossession

Thanks for keeping us updated Simon - it's worth a shot as the more people that have made complaints about Swift, the more likely the OFT will do something.............assuming they are not disbanded, that is :tinysmile_hmm_t2:

Did you manage to get in touch with the estate agents at all?

Nellie x